Imagination is cheap

It's a good thing we don't spend too much money on toys around here. Most of his toys are hand me downs either from my sister and her kids or from his uncles. What Danny lacks in fancy toys, he has certainly made up for in imagination lately. He's all about cars these days - parking, washing, racing and gassing them up and occasionally running them up and down my legs and through my hair.

One day I found him lining up his cars on the top step. "Gas station," he explained. "Getting the gas."

Cars are rolled under the van in the driveway. "Car wash," he says. "Getting clean. Fire engine is dirty."

He builds garages from blocks or just rolls his cars under the furniture. He lines them all up for a car show. In fact, this past weekend, we took him to a car show. And to his delight, there was a car there that looked just like one of his Matchbox cars.

Good thing we didn't buy him any of those fancy, molded plastic, made-in-China replicas of such things. Turns out, all he needs are $.97 Match Box cars from Target and some hand-me-down cars and his imagination.